


Home is Wherever I'm With You

by theclockiscomplete



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Post-Episode: 2017 Xmas Twice Upon A Time, whouffaldi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-02
Updated: 2018-01-02
Packaged: 2019-02-27 10:39:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13246482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theclockiscomplete/pseuds/theclockiscomplete
Summary: It's finally over, but they've never quite gotten the hang of endings.





	Home is Wherever I'm With You

He was halfway through a chocolate malt milkshake before he realized he had no idea how he’d gotten in the booth. He jerked back and surveyed the room with wide, confused eyes. Sixties, he recalled. Elvis. Chrome. But the words were disconnected from context; they drifted like islands of concept in nothingness. Jim the Fish. Who? Diner. He scrambled out of the booth, away from the soft vinyl and the napkin holder and the…the…condiments, that was it. Something felt wrong, and he stood very still, half-crouched and head turning slowly in all directions. Sound, he thought. It was completely and utterly quiet. Should it be like that?

Immediately, as though someone had flipped a switch, he became aware of the sounds of dishes tinkling as quiet conversation and laughter surrounded him. He stared into the booth on his left, the one directly in front of his. He heard silverware moving, could discern words, but they were indistinct and there was nobody there.

That’s right, he remembered. These tables were for people to sit and eat, so why was it empty?

“Sorry,” the man said with his hands carrying a half-eaten burger halfway to his mouth. He was about forty five, with fat fingers and a hairline straining for purchase. The lights reflected off the grease streaks around his lips. “You alright there, mate?” 

He knew distantly that he should be surprised, indignant, that...fillers were popping up as quickly as he could remember they should be there, but there was a kind of liquid calm running through his thoughts now, like he was getting the lie of the...thingy.

“Those'll give you a coronary,” he said absently, and kept moving as the man’s wife materialized across from him with a salad and a half-whispered “I told you so!”

Things were falling into place, slowly, but he still had no idea where he was. Geographically. So there was a world, then. The concept of a planet. This pleased him for reasons he couldn’t articulate. “Earth,” he said aloud, and the word slotted into place in his mouth. 

He became distantly aware that another sense was drifting back to him, but it evaded his attempts at quantification. So he gave up trying to name it and focused on noticing. A mother in the next booth ate her fries, and she salted them. Her child began to cry, and his sibling pinched him. He had a moment of vertigo as his mind rearranged things and suddenly it was happening in reverse, except…oh. Cause and effect. Time. How had he forgotten what time felt like?

He was a sieve, and he was filling, and there was just enough already in him to let him feel it happening. He tilted sideways and grasped at a barstool to hold himself up. Weight. Hands. He stared at his fingers, only partially comprehending them and only now realizing that the taste of his milkshake was in the back of his…throat. Yes. He touched it, hummed to feel it vibrate, then reached up and felt his jaw, his nose, something that didn’t give up its name quite yet, but was soft and moved with his feelings. 

He was dead, he remembered suddenly. The details were infuriatingly vague, but he knew the way everything else had been coming into his head that the form he was in was not his. So if he was dead, he wondered, why was he here? Was there something he was meant to do? 

Frustration welled up inexplicably in his not-chest. He knew enough to know that his job had been to fix things, and he had died. So was he here now to fix more things? What was this place?

He became aware of someone coming through the double doors that led to the back of the restaurant, and he knew somehow before their eyes met that this wasn’t anyone he’d created. The sight of her cut right through his brooding, for starters. She—she, was it? He was pretty sure—gathered a stack of receipts and moved to put them in a drawer, then paused and looked confused, as though wondering what she was doing that for. Her gaze settled on him as though magnetized, and her face did something he was pretty sure he never had the ability to quantify (suddenly having a past was incredibly disorienting; he let the concept push through him and left it for later inspection). 

“Hello,” she said gently, “you stupid old man.”

The world around him throbbed once, and he braced his elbows on the bar as what felt like everything in the universe—universes!—slammed into him at the same time. “Eyebrows,” he gasped, because he remembered them now and they were really quite significant.

She laughed, and his hearts soared; he felt like he was going to burst apart. “Take it slow,” she advised, and touched his face fondly. "It's always body parts with you," she said warmly. "Never a proper greeting."

“Clara,” he whispered.

“Yes,” she said. “It’s me. And I have missed you. So much.”

He was dimly aware of the flow of information beginning to slow as the last of it filled up his glass—he knew what he was now, and he knew it for the kindness it was, recognized fully what he had been given. The world was in color now, and he had only a moment to appreciate the entire spectrum in her brown eyes before his vision blurred, and he scrubbed a confused hand over his face, blinking at the wetness on them.

“Tears,” they said in unison, and Clara’s smile widened.

“Let’s go somewhere else,” she said, and then they were under a vast orange sky, knee deep in the grass that swayed around them in the warm breeze. This made sense, he realized. Here was where he had started his journey as The Doctor, where he had made a promise into a name. Here, also, would he lay it down. He turned to Clara, who was studiously examining a perfectly see-through beetle. 

“Aren’t we a little out of bounds here?” he asked, gesturing to the two of them. 

She rolled her eyes fondly. “Of course you’re questioning this,” she said.

“It’s just…aren’t we meant to stay in a vault or something?” he asked. “We’re…memory keepers. Nobody said anything about making new ones.”

Clara spun in a little circle on the spot and spread her hands. “When has keeping either of us in a vault ever worked out?”  
He took her hand so that she stilled and focused on him. “I just want to know what we’ve been given here,” he said earnestly. “I’ll take anything. A minute, an hour, it’s more than I ever thought I would have.” He pulled her in abruptly and held her to his chest. It didn’t matter that he knew they were glass; he could feel the warmth between them through their layers of clothes, feel Clara’s fingers reach up to grip his coat as her head rested in his shoulder. “But I’ve got to know, Clara,” he said over her head. “How long do I have to properly say goodbye to you?” 

There was a beat of silence, and then he heard the unmistakable sound of Clara giggling.

"What is it?" He was mystified. 

Clara stepped back just enough to keep his arms around her and see his face. “I suppose if you were forming in that diner then you really didn’t get the memo,” she said. 

“Memo?” he echoed, lost.

She looked up at him, as bright and happy as he’d ever seen her, and said, “This isn’t goodbye at all.”

He blinked, feeling hope begin to stir in his hearts even as he dared to ask. “Then this is…”

“It’s hello, ________.” His name tripped off of her tongue like she was its origin, swirling in the air around them and settling on him like a balm. He closed his eyes, drank it in. It had been so long. 

“Theta,” he said when the tingling subsided. “Just Theta is fine.”

“Whatever you like,” Clara said easily, stepping away and running her palms along the top of the grass. “The important thing is that it’s over. You’re not the Doctor anymore. There’s nothing to fix, nobody to save…there’s just you.”

Any other time, those words would have left him cold with dread, but Theta recognized them for the gift they were. The burden of the universe was no longer his. Eternity stretched before him without horror, without dread… and with Clara.

He grinned wolfishly at Clara--his Clara-- and held out a hand. “Shall we see what trouble we can make in Paradise?”

She took it primly in her own and made a face of feigned boredom. “Why Theta,” she said, “I thought you’d never ask.”


End file.
